Introduction
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TO Census Office, London, 27th June, 1881 SIR, AT no period earlier than the commencement of the present century was it possible to form "any trustworthy estimate as to the number of persons inhabiting this country. For all computations founded on. domesday books, on subsidy rolls, on payments of poll or hearth tax, and the like, however ingenious they might be, involved of necessity so large an intermixture of guesswork, as to deprive their results of any very substantial value. No proposal to ascertain the number of the population by systematic enumeration appears to have been made until the middle of the last century. On March 30th, 1753, Mr. Thomas Potter,1
who sat as member for St. Germans in the House of Commons, brought in a Bill " for taking and registering an annual account of the "total number of the people, and of the total number of marriages, births, and deaths; and also of the total number of the poor receiving alms from every parish and extra-parochial place in Great Britain." This Bill apparently had the support of the ministry of the day; for among those whose names appear on the back are Mr. George Greville, a Lord of the Treasury; Lord Barrington, a Lord of the Admiralty; and Mr. Charles Yorke, the Lord Advocate for Scotland.2
Accustomed as we are at the present time to such enumerations, the alarm with which the proposal was received, and the virulence of language with which it was combated, cannot but excite our surprise. "I did not believe," said its chief opponent3
in the Commons, "that there was any set of men, or, indeed, any individual of the human species, so presumptuous and so abandoned as to make the proposal we have just heard . I hold this project to be totally subversive of the last remains of English liberty. The new Bill will direct the imposition of new taxes, and indeed the addition of a very few words will make it the most effectual engine of rapacity and oppression that was ever used against an injured people. ... Moreover, an annual register of our people will acquaint our enemies abroad with our weakness." Another opponent, Mr. Matthew Ridley, stated that he knew by letters from the town he represented, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and from other parts that "the people looked on the proposal as ominous, and feared lest some public " misfortune or an epidemical distemper should follow the numbering." It was further urged, that the scheme was costly and impracticable; that it was an imitation of French policy, borrowed from our natural enemies; and that it would not only be a basis for new taxation, but for a conscription. Nor was this latter fear probably without some justification. For Mr. George Greville, a Lord of the Treasury, in supporting the Bill, said that "it will be extremely useful at all times for many useful purposes; and in the case of a long war, it will be absolutely necessary. For the usual methods of raising recruits for our army would not then be sufficient. We should be obliged to have recourse to that of obliging each parish to furnish a certain number." The Bill, thus supported, passed through all its stages in the Commons by large majorities, but was thrown out on the second reading in the House of Lords. Nearly half a century passed away before the proposal was renewed; but when the new Bill was introduced, in November 1800, into the House of Commons, it had the advantage of a great change which had apparently occurred in public opinion on the subject of population. The old fear that the number of the people was falling off, and that an enumeration would betray the inability of the country to, furnish a due supply of soldiers for the army, had given place to a new and opposite form of alarm 9 namely, that the people were increasing so rapidly as to outstrip the means of subsistence. Among the causes which may be supposed to have brought about this change of opinion, probably the most powerful was the great dearth which prevailed in the country at the time when the Bill was brought forward, much of the time of both Houses of Parliament being occupied in the year 1800 in discussions on "the present high price of provisions;" while a second cause that may fairly be assumed to have had some influence in the matter, was the attention excited by Malthus's great; work, of which the first edition was published anonymously in 1798, and taught its readers that there were other aspects of the question of population than the military one. The Population Bill was brought in by Mr. Abbot, member for Helston, on November 20th, 1800, and passed through all its stages without opposition. The enumeration was made on March 10th in the following year, and has been repeated ever since, without omission, in the first year of each successive decennium. The recent census was, therefore, the ninth enumeration of the inhabitants of this country. The difficulty of taking an account of the population within the limits of a single day, a limitation which is a distinctive feature in the method of enumeration adopted in this country, becomes greater and greater at each recurring decennial period, owing" to the rapid growth of the people and the increasing complexity of their local sub-divisions. We are, however, pleased to be able to report that the recent enumeration was carried out with complete success, and without more than the ordinary amount of friction; and we have every reason to believe that the figures, which we have now the honour to submit to you, as the result of the operation, are as accurate as those obtained on any previous occasion. It is, indeed, most probable, that, owing to the gradual dying out of the prejudices which hung about the earlier censuses, and to the increased experience of the local officials in the process of enumeration, each successive census has been more accurately taken than that which preceded it. The present report is, as you are aware, merely a preliminary one; and it will, perhaps, be well to explain in a few words in what respects this Preliminary Report differs from the more detailed account, which it will be our duty to present to 7013. at some future period. The difference is one of quantity and also of quality. The Preliminary Report deals simply with the numbers of the people and of their habitations, and with their distribution in place. It tells, that is, how many inhabitants there are in the whole country s and in the more important of its multifarious sub-divisions, such as its sub-districts, districts, its counties, and its municipal, parliamentary, and sanitary areas; and in how many dwelling-places they are housed. But as regards their ages, their occupations, their birth-places, their civil conditions, and all other matters concerning which questions were asked in the householders' schedules, this Preliminary Report contains no information. Neither does it take cognisance of the smaller sub-divisions of the country, such as parishes, nor, indeed, of some of the larger ones, as the registration counties. All these, however, are matters which in the Detailed Report will receive full consideration. Such, then, is the difference between the two reports as regards quantity. There is also a not unimportant difference as regards quality. The total numbers of inhabitants and of houses in each sub-district, as given in this Preliminary Report, are the totals furnished to the Central Office by the local registrars who obtained them by casting up the entries in the enumeration books of their respective sub-districts. The enumeration books, from which they worked, have as yet undergone no revision. The figures, therefore, in this Preliminary Report are based on unrevised returns. But for the purposes of the Detailed Report, each enumeration book will be carefully read through, all detectible errors be corrected, and a fresh casting of the entries, thus corrected, be made. The preliminary totals are rarely perfectly correct. In almost every sub-district some correction has to be made on revision. The amount of error, however, is usually very small, so that for ordinary practical purposes these totals may be used with a tolerable certainty of not falling into any serious error. Moreover, in larger aggregates than sub-districts, such as counties, great cities or towns, and the like, the errors in the totals of the individual sub-districts have a tendency to correct each other, and to such an extent, that the difference between the unrevised and the revised totals of all England and Wales, with a population of nearly 23 millions, amounted at the census of 1871 to no more than 8,158. The error was still more insignificant in respect to the number of inhabited houses; for, out of a total of more than four millions and a quarter, the difference between the revised and the unrevised figures was but 85. The preliminary figures, therefore, may be used without fear for the larger divisions of the country, and still more for the country itself, and it is only in the case of the smaller sub-divisions, such as sub-districts, that caution is required. 1
Mr. Potter was son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and a barrister of the Middle Temple. 2
Besides these three ministers, the following members backed the Bill: Lord Hillborough, Lord Dupplin, Mr. Oswald. 3
Viz., Mr, Thornton, member for the city of York.CENSUS OF 1881.
PRELIMINARY REPORT
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE JOHN GEORGE DODSON, M.P.,
PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD, &c.Uncertainty of estimates of population before this century.
First proposal to have a census, in 1753.
Proposal for Census in 1753 opposed and rejected.
Census again proposed in 1800.
First census taken in 1801.
Increasing difficulty of taking census in one day.
Differences between Preliminary and Detailed Report.